sound of the words of a poem or the colors and lines of a painting or
statue can do. As mere sound and as mere color and line, they convey
something of the feeling tone of the subject which, as symbols, they
are used to represent. For example, the soft flowing lines of Correggio,
quite apart from the objects they represent, express the voluptuous
happiness of his "Venus and Mars"; the slow rhythm of the repeated
word sounds and the quality of the vowels in the opening lines of
_Tithonus_ are expressive in themselves, apart from their meaning,
of the weariness in the thoughts of the hero, and so serve to re-express
and enforce the mood of those thoughts. When we come to study the
particular arts, we shall find this phenomenon of re-expression through
the medium everywhere.

A second characteristic distinguishing aesthetic expressions from other
expressions is their superior unity. In the latter, the unity lies in
the purpose to be attained or in the content of the thought expressed;
it is teleological or logical. The unity of a chair is its purpose,
which demands just such parts and in just such a mechanical arrangement;
the unity of a business conversation is governed by the bargain to be
closed, requiring such words and such only, and in the appropriate
logical and grammatical order. The unity of an argument is the thesis
to be proved; the unity of a diagram is the principle to be illustrated
or the information to be imparted. Compare the unity of a sonnet or
a painting. In a sonnet, there is a unity of thought and sentiment
creating a fitting grammatical unity in language, but in addition a
highly elaborate pattern in the words themselves that is neither
grammatical nor logical. In a painting, besides the dramatic unity of
the action portrayed, as in a battle scene; or of the spatial and
mechanical togetherness of things, as in a landscape; there is a harmony
of the colors, a composition of the lines and masses themselves, not